My Paris Diary of 1870 397 



invite him to restaurant dinners, where his stories were of the best of an 

 extreme grivois kind, for he had led the gayest of gay lives.] In the train, 

 as I came down here from Paris, I got into conversation with two deputies 

 from Mantes. One narrated his having asked Grammont how it was that 

 the army had been caught unprepared? Grammont had answered that 

 before making his declaration to the Chamber he had inquired of Le Boeuf, 

 ' Are you ready? ' and Le Bceuf had replied, ' I can put 600,000 men on the 

 Rhine in a fortnight.' Everybody is angry with Le Bceuf. 



" A letter is published from the Prince de Joinville offering his services 

 to the Emperor. Changarnier has been made Commandant de place at 

 Metz. He is seventy-two years old. On Friday the 12th, Anne, Alice 

 Noel, and I drove to Glanville, from which village the Glanvilles of 

 Catchfrench claim originally to have come. There is a chateau there, 

 which we visited, of the time of Louis XIII, undergoing restoration by its 

 propretor, M. de Glanville, a man of sixty, whom we found at work weed- 

 ing in his grounds. I noticed that the coat of arms over the door was not 

 our English Glanville coat, and he told me that he had not the pretension 

 of descending from the original family. It must have been a picturesque 

 old place before the restoration, the avenues and the park round it good, 

 the elms just like the Cornish elms at Catchfrench, the country about it 

 beautiful and very English. We then drove on to Pont l'Eveque, a 

 charming, sleepy old town full of cats, and dined at the Bras d'or, a drum 

 was beating there, and a crier calling out all men from twenty-five to 

 thirty-five for the war. Later we saw the mayor posting up a notice 

 announcing the capture oL Nancy by a detachment of the enemy's cavalry. 



" 16th, Aug. — Paris. I came up yesterday morning by train from 

 Deauville, and on my way to the station read a telegram announcing that 

 the French army had crossed to the left bank of the Moselle, and meeting 

 the Prussians in force had repulsed them. The telegram is dated Longue- 

 ville and signed Napoleon. The Emperor seems to have left Metz on the 

 14th at two o'clock intending to go to Chalons. Nancy, which is in the 

 hands of the Prussians, is a town of 30,000 inhabitants. It is quite open, 

 and was occupied by them without resistance. The advance posts of the 

 enemy have been pushed on to Toul and S. Mihiel. 



" Yesterday was the festival of S. Napoleon, probably the last which 

 will be ever celebrated in France. Paris was silent as the grave, and when 

 I first arrived I thought a disaster must have happened. Bands of men 

 were at work on the fortifications. There is much to do before Paris can 

 resist a siege, houses to be razed and trees cut down. There were no 

 illuminations and scarcely a flag. I remember the fete of the 15th of 

 August in 1864 when I had just joined the Embassy as attache. The 

 Emperor was then still popular, believed to be the longest head in Europe. 

 The Place de la Concorde, the Quays and the Invalides were one great 

 crowd, theatres open to the public gratis, shows and entertainments at 

 every corner. A balloon was being sent up from the Champ de Mars. 

 Carriages were forbidden to circulate in the too crowded streets, all but 

 those of the foreign Ambassadors. I had only that morning arrived, and 

 Lady Cowley took me with her and her daughter, Lady Feodore, and 



